Gordon Uehling on ParentingAces

Summary

Gordon Uehling, founder of Court Sense in New Jersey and an investor in PlaySite, presents the PlaySite smart court system — a five-camera court installation priced at $10,000 that auto-tags every shot (forehand, backhand, volley, serve), tracks distance covered, measures shot speed, and syncs data to the cloud. Uehling claims his facility is “the first smart facility in the world,” with 35-40 high performance junior players training on PlaySite-equipped courts. The system also enables college coaches to remotely view tournament footage, transforming how recruiting evaluation happens. Uehling played on the tour for nine years, reaching a ranking of approximately 900 in singles.

Guest Background

Gordon Uehling played professional tennis for nine years, reaching approximately 900 in ATP singles rankings. After his playing career, he founded Court Sense, a high-performance tennis training facility in New Jersey. He subsequently became an investor in PlaySite, a smart court technology company, and has installed the PlaySite system across his facility’s competition courts. His dual identity as a former professional and a technology investor gives him a unique perspective on how data and analytics can improve the training process for juniors and professionals alike.

Key Findings

1. PlaySite: Five-Camera Court System for $10,000

PlaySite installs five cameras per court at a cost of approximately $10,000 per court installation. The cameras capture every point from multiple angles and feed data to an automated tagging system that classifies each shot by type (forehand, backhand, volley, overhead, serve). The $10,000 price point — while significant — is within reach for serious high-performance facilities and represents a major reduction from the cost of equivalent professional-level technology.

2. Automated Shot Tagging Across Every Point

The system’s core capability is automated shot tagging: every forehand, backhand, volley, serve, and overhead is identified and logged without manual review. This generates a statistical profile of a player’s shot selection across an entire training session or match without requiring any human effort to categorize. The automation at scale is what makes the system viable for junior development — manual shot charting at the same granularity would be prohibitively labor-intensive.

3. Distance Covered, Shot Speed, and (Upcoming) RPM

In addition to shot tagging, PlaySite tracks distance covered per player per session, shot speed for every ball, and — as an upcoming feature — RPM (revolutions per minute, measuring spin rate). The combination of movement data, velocity data, and spin data creates a multi-dimensional competitive profile that goes significantly beyond what traditional coaching observation can capture.

4. Cloud Synchronization Enables Remote Access

All PlaySite data syncs to the cloud, enabling coaches, parents, and — critically — college recruiting coaches to access training and match footage remotely. Uehling specifically highlights the recruiting use case: college coaches who cannot travel to every junior tournament can review PlaySite footage from their offices and evaluate recruits with video evidence rather than relying solely on rankings and word-of-mouth.

5. “First Smart Facility in the World” with 35-40 High Performance Players

Uehling describes his New Jersey facility as claiming the designation of “the first smart facility in the world” — the first training center to have systematically deployed PlaySite across its competition courts and to have integrated the data output into daily training for its full high-performance cohort. The 35-40 high performance players training on these courts are generating a longitudinal dataset that is likely unique in junior tennis at that time.

6. Remote Recruiting: College Coaches Access Footage Without Traveling

The recruiting application of PlaySite — enabling college coaches to evaluate junior players remotely through cloud-accessible match footage — has implications for both recruiting efficiency and equity. Coaches at programs with limited travel budgets can evaluate players they could not previously afford to see in person. Players at high-quality but geographically distant programs gain access to recruiting evaluation from coaches who could not justify the travel cost.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Investigate whether your training facility has or is considering smart court technology — data-driven training environments are becoming a differentiator in high-performance junior development
• When selecting between training facilities, ask about their data and analytics capabilities alongside coaching staff credentials
• Ensure your child’s competitive footage is accessible to college coaches — whether through PlaySite or other recording services, video evidence is increasingly central to the recruiting evaluation process
• Track shot speed and distance covered as training metrics — these objective measures provide developmental feedback that coaching observation alone cannot deliver

INTENNSE Relevance

• Court analytics infrastructure: PlaySite’s five-camera, automated shot-tagging model at $10,000 per court is a direct precursor to the multi-camera, data-rich court analytics infrastructure that INTENNSE’s format requires. The technology has matured significantly since 2014 and is now viable at the professional level
• Real-time data for coaching decisions: The shot-tagging and movement-tracking data that PlaySite generates in practice could feed directly into INTENNSE’s coaching decision environment. Coaches making substitution decisions mid-arc would benefit from real-time data on player performance, shot selection, and physical output
• Fan engagement through data: The statistical profiles PlaySite generates — shot speed, distance covered, shot selection percentages — are exactly the kind of fan-facing data that makes tennis more legible and engaging to non-expert audiences. INTENNSE should think about how to surface this data as fan content
• Remote evaluation and scouting: The cloud-accessible footage model that PlaySite pioneered is directly applicable to INTENNSE’s team scouting and player evaluation process. Teams should be able to evaluate potential acquisitions through video and data without requiring in-person evaluation for every candidate

Notable Quotes

“Every forehand, every backhand, every volley — the system knows what it was and logs it. You end up with a statistical profile of a player’s game that coaching observation alone could never produce.”

“College coaches don’t have the budget to travel to every tournament. If you can send them a link to watch your player’s matches from their office, you’ve changed the recruiting calculus.”